Variax Shuriken

[sleewell]

Piezo bridges are piezo bridges. Plink-Plink.

This is where my gas fizzles as well. But they do look cool


12 ft ninja does make them sound very good tho

 

[SymphonicDischord]

This is a pretty cool video from NAMM a few years back with Stevic.

 

[paisleywookiee]

I’ll be interested in the next generation. I’ve had two of the current ones, and they weren’t great quality. The first one’s electronics went haywire in less than a month, and the second one arrived with a twisted neck. The tech is cool as hell though.

 

[Eagle]

At least from my experience, that seems to be true.

As far as their Variaxes are concerned, they seem to be introducing quite some latency.
If I wanted something similar, I'd go Boss/Roland and get a GK pickup and perhaps an SY-1000.
Sure, it's nice to have it all straight in the guitar, but Roland has at least somewhat established a kind of standard, which is worth a lot once you need things to be fixed.

Yes just put the whole thing outside of the guitar. 10 to 20 years is no time in the age of a guitar but this is potentially dead for the sake of a switch long before that.

 

[Mooselake]

I remember thinking this was pretty cool when it came out, but it's a style of guitar that doesn't fit my style at all.

I keep waiting on a "next gen" variax. I have a JTV-59 but I never play it any more because the pots and switches could not stand up to SE US humidity. A shame for two reasons: it was a lot of fun while it worked, and it started wigging out right before I got my Helix LT so I never got to marry the two.

 

[paisleywookiee]

I’d also mention that while not as straightforward, the Roland/Boss VG stuff sounds quite a bit better these days, and works with almost any guitar.

 

[metropolis_4]

I used Variax’s live for a while back in the 500/600/700 series days.

I was gigging doing regional tours with a singer-songwriter who loved alternate tunings and before the Variax I was lugging around 5 electrics to cover it all.

It was amazing having just one guitar (and a backup) instead of 5 and no juggling guitars between songs. The convenience was great, but there was a compromise in tone for sure. They always sounded digital and had that signature “something” not natural in the high end. Plus forget about palm muting.

Ultimately after that gig ended I stopped using them and went back to normal guitars

My take is that the Roland/GK stuff is 100x better if you need instrument modeling.

 

[JiveTurkey]

I'd say if you are still deep in the Helix world with something with a Variax input; it makes a lot more sense than for really anything else.

 

[Sleezy E]

I heart my jtv59.

I've had it for 6-7 years and play it more than all my other guitars combined. I used to have 2, sold one to my uncle cause he liked mine so much.

Latency is technically there if you wanna get in the weeds.. but it's really not a thing, and it only applies to the modeling circuit, not the magnetic pickups.

I had a wonky pickup switch for a hot minute.. deoxit fixed that right up.

If/when the modeling electronics crap out I plan on putting a piezo preamp in its place and it'll still be a killer lp style guitar, did I mention the stock pickup are awesome sounding?

I added a set of Seymour Duncan triple shots to the magnetic pickups too so I can get a single coil quack without going through the modeling as well.

Tl;Dr
I'm a Jtv59 fan boy
I'll be first in line to buy a gen3